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LinkedIn: Stock's a Buy, Company's a Perpetual Start-up

Written by: Rocco Pendola02/08/13 - 12:28 PM EST

Tickers in this article:
AAPL AMZN FB LNKD P YHOO

NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- I'm in San Francisco Friday to chat with Tim Westergren, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pandora (P) . (Check my Twitter feed -- @Rocco_TheStreet -- for pictures from Pandora's Oakland HQ and elsewhere around the Bay Area all weekend.)

There's just this whole way of thinking about companies as start-ups that, say, the classically trained MBA simply cannot wrap his or her head around. As someone who is rarely at a loss for words, I have a bit of difficulty expressing how I feel. It's almost like it's such a part of me that I can't explain it (if that makes sense!).

That said, when I talk to entrepreneurs, people at start-ups and others of that ilk, they just "get it." They completely understand why I'm bullish Amazon.com (AMZN) and bow to the Bezos. When I pitch them on TheBeach Meets TheStreet , the idea of a raw, unrefined, wholly casual production resonates with them. They have no trouble making sense of the notion that companies such as Pandora, Facebook (FB) and LinkedIn (LNKD) are the future ... NOW.

Investors need to embrace a new way of thinking as the decade progresses: This is not 1999-2000. That era set the stage for what we have now -- companies changing the rules of the game, not to mention the way we carry out our most basic daily functions.

This is the classic case of a perpetual start-up with massive long-term opportunity and the drive, resources and know-how to leverage it.

You can read the above-linked article to get the numbers on LinkedIn's quarter, but I'm more concerned with the great instinct of the company's CEO, Jeff Weiner, and the people who work with him. They just get things done. Head down. Tunnel vision. No attention paid to the critics who claim they're not for real ... because they realize -- though with humility -- that these critics simply do not get it.